Active Listening in the Modern world (Article)

Very Interesting Article...

Too Much Music: A Failed Experiment In Dedicated Listening

 

Liked it. Interesting observation and premise. There's a lot there that I agree with, in terms of the information overload we have with music today.

 

Great article I can relate to a lot of things things he is saying.

More music is available than ever to listen to, but I agree that I probably don't really listen as closely to albums as I did when I was 14 and probably only had 40 or so albums.

I still buy a fair amount of new CD's and do a lot of my listening that way (I stream as well for on the go), but I don't think it will ever match my formative years of love of music when I pored over every detail on the record.

 

An interesting, if very long article.

''My father once challenged me on what he perceived as the senselessness of my record-buying habit, and I explained to him that the happiest feeling in the world, for me, was walking into a record store with a few dollars to spend; few things have ever made me feel as good, and I suspect few things ever will. There is, in any obsession, a kind of helplessness, but as addictions go, this one has always seemed to me pretty harmless. The modern world, however, has issued a new and terrifying challenge: Try and keep up.''

Too Much Music: A Failed Experiment In Dedicated Listening

 

Thanks for signposting this. A good read - and some behaviours I recognise .

 

Yes, a long article, albeit based upon an interesting premise.

I could not finish it.

However, when the author devised his plan to listen to just one album a week, he ignored and shunned a major tenet of music listening:

Enjoyment

When it comes to music and art, the overcoming rushing feeling of joy and exhilaration would ideally accompany what you’re experiencing;
That’s what makes the experience everlasting and memorable.

Designate a timetable, as to when one should listen to the music - then the noble experiment is doomed from the first note.

That’s more like punching the time clock at work.

 

A fascinating article and one that very much reflects my own feelings about the way we collect and listen to music these days. How ironic that we now have access to far more music than ever before but actually know it less well than we used to. I have also tried a similar experiment to the writer of the piece - and I also failed.

Thanks for sharing Jackson.

 

You should have finished the article, he says basically that exact thing.

 

With a few small changes, this article describes my experiences with music acquisition and appreciation pretty accurately. I even started a "one album per week" experiment not too long ago in an effort to appreciate what I have and to slow my CD/LP buying habits. So far, it has resulted in a large stockpile of CDs waiting to be opened.

 

Agree- you missed the whole point of the article. A very good read!

 

I just happened to finish this article minutes before seeing your post. It's a recommendation in the Pocket app. Loved this:

"And then one day, a revelation: It occurred to me that it was no longer just difficult to hear all the music I'd amassed, but impossible. I mean literally, mathematically impossible: I calculated that if I lived another, say, 40 years, and spent every minute of those next 40 years — that's no sleeping, no eating — listening to my collection of music, I would be dead before I could make it all the way through."

 

I don't know if the article gets around to considering it and I don't intend to actually read it to find out. It's really quite obvious and trivial that the accumulation of entertainment that people like me have in their home alone after 65 years would take much longer than another 65 years to read, watch, or listen to again. And yet I continue to buy new stuff. Why is that? The justification I've used for years now is that the price of the book, video, recording is what it costs to experience it, not to possess it. Take each outlay of money as an admission price and you can more than justify the price of experiencing any of the good stuff in your collection once. The bonus is that owning it you probably have about the best possible means of experiencing it, and you can do it as many times as you wish. That includes zero. By that argument I should probably be giving away things I don't ever think I'll listen to, watch, or read again but I've taken no steps to do so. My collection has already paid for itself.

 

That is one of several points which the article covers.

 

I had this same ''revelation'' a long time ago, that realization no longer bothers me. There is enjoyment to be had in just /collecting/owning albums that i love in physical form, even if some of them may go unplayed.

 

That's part of the fun, and why not? My dad used to collect stamps. He wasn't actually going to mail any letters with them.

 

So many truths in that article that I can relate to.

I've come to the realization years ago that I simply own too much music and while I liked most of it, the large majority of it I didn't like enough to warrant so many repeated listenings. I would listen to an album simply because, well, I owned it.

I also realized I was listening to way too much music that I merely liked and did not love. And while I don't agree with the point in the article that there are only about ten albums in a lifetime that you truly love, I also know it isn't in the 5,000 plus range either.

My goal for this year, so far successful, has been to cut down on purchases of recordings I simply wanted to have that I know I wouldn't devote myself to over the long haul. I've also decided to cull my collection down to only the albums that rank very high in my pleasure zones..ie..absolute favorites. And while I'm not sure what that number is yet I've successfully removed about 500 CDs from my shelves and have stored them in a closet.

So far I haven't even made much notice that they are no longer there. I won't sell them just in case but going forward I intend to keep culling in this manner until I whittle my collection down to only those albums I enjoy the most out of everything I own.

Just to use one example, I've taken notice that I own many albums from bands were I only like certain songs so for those I'm content with a greatest hits CD as opposed to keeping all of the studio albums there that I don't listen to. I've also recognized that while I find bonus tracks and alternate tracks on deluxe versions to be interesting to a certain point I tend to, with a few exceptions, never return to them so I've also lost interest in most reissues and $100 boxsets of albums I already own.

I haven't given up on purchases completely, not in the least, but I'm surely going to use more discretion going forward. I can pass up that used CD that's selling for only $2 that I don't really want.

And my conclusion thus far is I'm enjoying my collection a helluva a lot more by cutting down on my collection.

 

This was a pretty good article. I didn't think it was too long a read.

Makes me think about my own experiences. Before I went whole-hog on streaming a few years back, my friend and I would go to Amoeba Music and pile up a ton of used CD's. My friend in particular has a good skill of finding really obscure 90's alt-rock discs by bands he knows.

After awhile, it seemed more like I was stockpiling stuff rather than enjoying the music, though I did typically spend a good bit of time with what I bought. Streaming has been great but quite overwhelming, and I'm still at a loss sometimes as to what to listen to on there besides my usual playlists.

With getting back into vinyl, I find I'm spending more time with the music and contemplating it as well as enjoying it. It's a weird push and pull sometimes.

When I just want sounds and not focus on them too closely, I listen to a lot of streaming ambient & drum and bass, kind of clears the mental palate.

 

Enjoyment is exactly why ive gone crazy and listened to nearly 1000 grateful dead shows in the last 3 years

 

The quote most apt to this forum:

The notion that there is something to be gained by choosing this type of scarcity, by actively inviting a kind of regression, suddenly seems, to this Western mind, pretty stupid. It dawns on me that I've made this choice not for reasons of spiritual asceticism or worldly good, but nostalgia, the last refuge of the middle-aged sad-sack. I begin feeling like a Civil War reenactor, or the man at the Renaissance Faire who scolds you for wearing a watch; a pedant, an anachronism. The very embodiment of everything about a 40-year old that baffles a 20-year old.

 

Yes, very good article. Thanks for posting.

 

Really good article. Thanks for posting it.

Yeah, I recognize way too much of myself in the article.

 

Yeah, there's a lot of me in that article.

There's more out there that I like than I'll have time for - which is a crazy thought.

 

Aha !

Thanks for validating what I had already thought. I didn’t need to read an exploratory think piece, just to learn something that most music aficionados already know.
It sounds like I didn’t miss any thing.

I guess I’m gonna write an article, with the thesis that I spend too much time reading about music, when that time is better spent actually listening to it !

 

I like the idea of having a record collection that is large enough that I'll probably never be able to listen to it all. It's like walking into a public library and realizing that, while I will never have time to read all of the books, I know there are a lot of good books there for me to enjoy... with different volumes to match every mood. It's fun to go digging around and find something I haven't enjoyed in a long time and re-discover it again.

Having said that, I don't necessarily feel the urge to listen to everything I own at least once more in my lifetime. Some albums I have purchased just didn't do it for me... or they once were important to me, but no longer hold any personal significance or enjoyment. They may only exist in my collection just because the act of constantly thinning one's collection can be a time-consuming chore.

 

This was a great article. Thanks for sharing. I’m sure many of us here can relate. My favorite quote:

“She claimed that we only ever really love 10 albums, and we spend the rest of our listening lives seeking facsimiles of those 10, pursuing the initial rush, so to speak.”

I have felt this way for years. Not just about music but movies as well. The few times I brought it up I was shot down. I think people don’t want this to be true just as the author of the article said himself. It’s as though if you admit that it’s true, it will somehow hit their ego.